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If turkey prices could talk

Burlington
Published 1:44 p.m. ET Nov. 27, 2014

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Turkeys are more affordable today than they were for previous generations.(Photo: FREE PRESS FILE)Buy Photo

Whatever the Pilgrims ate on the holiday we today celebrate as Thanksgiving, that dinner was likely held after the fall harvest—much earlier than when we now celebrate it. And for much of American history, Thanksgiving was celebrated on a different date in different states.

It wasn’t until President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation in 1863 setting the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving that it became a national holiday, and President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941 set the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving.

A lot has changed for the American people since the original Thanksgiving, and since the two wartime proclamations that used the holiday to unify the American people in the war effort. One of the biggest changes is that our economy has grown, and as it has grown almost everything we buy has become more, not less, affordable to the average person.

Today we use the holiday to celebrate the abundance of food in our lives, and that abundance is a reflection of our overall well-being. We give thanks for that food, but there is a lot more that we are really celebrating.

Our lives are far better than they were in the days of the Pilgrims or when Abraham Lincoln lived, or when Franklin Roosevelt was president, or than they were in the 1950s, 1960s, or at any time in the recent or distant past.

For one, food is a lot cheaper, more available, and more abundant. We have food available at low cost that would be almost unimaginable to our great-grandparents or even some of our grandparents.

To take but one example, they would be amazed that we could buy fresh grapes in February, and at an affordable price. And even more remarkable to them would be that the grapes were grown in Chile.

I don’t know how much a Thanksgiving turkey cost at the turn of the 20th century, but one hundred years ago the average American family spent nearly half of its income for food. That would be the equivalent of about $29,000 for a family today.

Instead, the average American family today actually spends $9,000 a year on food. That frees up a lot of money to be spent on all sorts of other things, including education for our children, vacations, housing, entertainment and health care.

Even as recently as the so-called golden years of the 1950s and 1960s, the average family spent one-quarter of its income on food, the equivalent today of about $16,000.

Lower food costs have spilled over into Thanksgiving. A frozen turkey cost about $1.00 per pound in 1980. Given the average annual worker pay in Vermont, that meant the average Vermonter spent about 2.5 hours working to earn enough to buy a 15-pound Thanksgiving turkey.

Ten years later turkeys still cost $1.00 per pound but thanks to productivity growth, the average worker’s wage had increased enough so that it took less than one-and-a-half hours of work for an average Vermont worker to earn enough to buy a 15-pound bird.

Wages continued to rise and by 2005 turkeys still cost about $1.00 per pound. But in 2005 it took less than an hour of an average workers’ wages to buy that 15-pound turkey.

Turkey prices have increased a lot since 2005 and now, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, cost about $1.70 per pound. Even with that increase, it takes the average Vermont worker only one hour and twelve minutes to earn enough to buy that size turkey, not much more than a decade ago.

Anyone who has been shopping for Thanksgiving supplies knows they can buy frozen turkeys for less than $1.70, and they can also buy a fresh, locally raised turkey for a lot more. But the decline in the number of hours of work needed to buy a turkey, and all the other food we cook today, is still astounding.

That just about everything is cheaper today than in the past, in terms of the number of work hours needed to buy it, is a defining characteristic of modern life. Indeed, in 1928 Herbert Hoover ran for president promising to put “a chicken in every pot, and a car in every garage.”

Back then, chicken was an expensive luxury item—beef was far cheaper. And the car was becoming a symbol of middle class status. Today, chickens are a cheap food item and almost every family has a car, including most poor families.

When we put candles on our Thanksgiving tables, we don’t think twice about the cost of the candles, nor about the cost of the electricity we use to light the room. But when young Abraham Lincoln was reading by candlelight in his log cabin, his family did have to consider the cost of that candlelight.

Candles were expensive back then. To get as much light as we get today for a dime would have cost the Lincoln family nearly $3. Reading at night was an expensive luxury, especially for a poor farm family. Fortunately, young Abe did read at night, and he used the knowledge he gained to become one of our most important and illustrious presidents—and certainly not because he established Thanksgiving as a national holiday.

As we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, we might reflect, and be thankful for, our good fortune to live in a nation that gives us the ability to continue to improve our well-being in many dimensions, including our continuously rising standard of living. When we travel by car to be with friends and family, fill our plates with wonderful food, and sit in a brightly lit room, we are experiencing just a few of those benefits.